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Today I’ve decided to restart my guide to get 10.7 (lion) working on the 1005HA/HAB/HE/H models, just like my Snow Leopard guide. My motivation has been reborn and I am ready to start again. I am going to throw out my method that I was using before and start clean. Head over to the InsanelyMac forum post I’ve made and leave a comment there if you want me to do this or bag it. Any positive comments or support would be greatly appreciated and keep my motivation high! I still don’t have a lot of time to devote to the guide, since I’m still in school full-time. But any free time I get will be devoted towards the guide 🙂

People have been complaining for a while now about their netbooks freezing on the OS X Grey screen when the USB drive is booting the installer program. I figured this out a while back, and answer many questions here (and on the InsanelyMac forums) about this problem.

If you are using OS X Lion (v 10.7) to restore your image file to your USB stick, then you will NOT be able to get this installation to run. When Lion was made, tweaks to Disk Utility (specifically the restoration process for restoring disk images to other places [such as your USB stick/SD card] created problems with hackintosh users all over the place. If you are attempting my guide (or most others for that matter), you need to use a computer with either OS X Leopard (v 10.5) or Snow Leopard (v 10.6). These both have safe versions of disk utility to restore the image file to your USB stick. Lion will NOT WORK.

I have gotten a lot of messages, emails, and posts about Lion and the progress on it, mainly negative messages about why the guide isn’t out yet. Here’s some background:

Everyone keeps saying that people have already released guides to get Lion on other models of Asus Netbooks. Here would be the difference between my guide and theirs: They are using DP1 or DP2 to put Lion on the netbook. If you don’t know, DP means Developer Preview, so basically beta versions of Lion. They are not the full versions and do not allow for all the parts of Lion to be utilized (and thus making the guide would be easier). I will NOT release a DP guide for Lion because I consider it a waste of time.

Secondly, in reference to the numerous amounts of messages, emails, etc. This has become extremely frustrating during my time in making the guide. I am a college student, enrolled in 7 classes this semester, and my number one priority is exactly that, school. Unfortunately, I cannot devote hours and hours of time to making a guide, as much as I find certain aspects of it enjoyable. I have become extremely irate at times during this guide-making experience, because Lion is a completely separate beast compared to Snow Leopard. There are numerous differences, especially with the structure of how Lion is run/how it was made. The constant barrage of interaction between the community and myself is tiresome and makes my progress even slower.

Lately, the decision to continue to make this guide is very shaky. I have been going back and forth debating whether to continue my progress on this guide or not. For now, I am focusing on my schoolwork and seeing from there whether my guide will continue to be worked on.

During this time, I ask the community to please be respectful of my decision, for now, to take my focus off this guide. I understand that some people will hate and some people will get pissed and publicize it. My job as the Asus Netbook Moderator on the InsanelyMac forums remains, as I love doing that, and it isn’t time consuming like making hackintosh guides. For the remaining people who will understand my position, thank you for your respect and your understanding.

I know a lot of you are eagerly waiting for me to release the guide on how to install OS X Lion on your netbooks. The process of making these types of guides are not easy and take lots of time, effort, wiping and reinstallation. The definites I know are these:

1) This installation will be building off your Snow Leopard installation. Thus, I will make the guide VERY SIMPLE, because if you screw up the installation, you would have to go back and reinstall snow leopard before you can upgrade again.
2) Internal wifi might have issues working, just like snow leopard before 10.6.4. But I’m not sure on this one.
3) You will need to actually BUY LION! I will not and do not support piracy. In order to get this installation working, you must download Lion THROUGH THE APP STORE! Because you need to extract and replace certain files in the dmg file that you can only do before you burn it to the SD card/usb drive.

So I’m getting somewhat frustrated at this point. So this is the update on the 1005HA/HAB guide.

1) As far as updating to 10.6.8, please do NOT attempt this update on your own. you will cause a KP or an unstable install. I have released and update for a reason, and that reason is because I cannot create a stable install yet. Please WAIT!

2) If you are going to go against my recommendation of updating, then be smart and still follow the backup steps for updating to 10.6.5/10.6.6/10.6.7 (as far as the graphics and buffer kexts…)

3) OS X Lion: I have gotten a RIDICULOUS amount of emails and comments from people about making their netbook able to run Lion. So I have multiple comments on this:

a) First of all, Lion is STILL IN BETA! Yes, the GM (Golden Master) beta was just released, but it’s not even fully out, so BE PATIENT!
b) Secondly, even if it were out, it’s going to take the entire community a WHILE to create a way to get Lion to work on hackintosh (IF AT ALL). Since there is no physical media for the Lion install (it is going to be a download through the Mac App Store), it is going to be very difficult to get a way to modify the Lion installation, let alone actually install it. So, again, BE PATIENT!
c) Please don’t spam my email or comment continuously about this. I have had the beta for a while, but it’s going to take a while before Lion will be available for hackintosh. Not only that, do NOT spam the InsanelyMac forums either. I moderate the Asus Netbook section, as you guys know, and any spam related to Lion will be removed immediately, unless it is a LEGITIMATE question. (i.e. “What are the major structural changes Lion has compared to Snow Leopard?” not “When will Lion work on my netbook?”).

I appreciate your cooperation in this. I have become somewhat annoyed with the community about their lack of patience on this release. At least wait until the software is fully released before spamming everyone’s laptop screens.

Hey Guys,
Quick little update about what’s been going on. A little progress has been made in fixing the heat-related issue that is going on with the netbooks, so stay tuned for the update.

On a bigger note, I want to thank you all for your support of my guide and this blog! Now, you’re gonna ask why I am saying this so randomly. The reason is because I am now a Moderator for the Asus Netbook section on the InsanelyMac forums! I never would’ve gotten to this point without everyone’s help and publicity, so thank you all!

The new legacy Kernel was released for the 10.6.7 update. There is a new package way to update to 10.6.7 and upgrade the kernel, but I do NOT recommend doing this. There are too many ways to make mistakes. Here’s how you update.

There are 2 ways of doing this guide. I will post both and you decide which to go with.

Once the combo update is downloaded, go ahead and backup the following kexts:
IO80211Family.kext
AppleIntelGMA950.kext
AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext

Method 1

This is the older way of doing this, which has worked for me. Run the combo update. Once it is done, it will prompt you to restart. DO NOT RESTART! Minimize or hide the window. Move the old 10.6.5 kernel (found in the original download that you used get to 10.6.5) to your desktop. Then open Terminal and enter the following codes (same as last time).

Once this is done, restart using the combo update window. After your computer boots, replace all the kexts you backed up and also put in the new SleepEnabler kext from the updated download into your /System/Library/Extentions folder. Then run pfix again. Restart. You should be updated to 10.6.7 and have everything working.

Method 2 (I DID NOT USE THIS METHOD AND DO NOT LIKE IT!)

Run the combo update. This could take a while, so be prepared to do some waiting. Once this is done, it’s going to prompt you to restart. Like the previous updates, DO NOT RESTART! Just minimize the window for now.

At this point, you want to run the legacy_kernel-10.7.0.pkg. This will update your kernel to the new version (10.7.o legacy kernel) and replace the SleepEnabler kext for you. You can now restart. On bootup, replace the backed up kexts and run pfix. Restart again.
Like I said, I do not support Method #2 because I did not use it myself. There is no difference between using the new legacy kernel and the old method. I personally like the first method because it is safer to use with the way we have updated to 10.6.5 and 10.6.6.